t returned at
the Restoration.

Gillingham cannot show many old houses and it has the appearance of a
busy and flourishing manufacturing town of the smaller sort without
any of the sordid accompaniments of such places. Its commercial
activities--pottery and tile-making, breweries and flour mills, linen
and silk manufacture, are mostly modern and have been fostered by the
exceptional railway facilities. In its Grammar school, founded in 1526
by John Grice, it still has a first-rate educational establishment
with the added value of a notable past, for here was educated
Clarendon, the historian of the Great Rebellion, and several other
famous men.

[Illustration: SALISBURY CATHEDRAL.]

CHAPTER IX

SALISBURY AND THE RIVERS

There are three obvious ways of approaching Salisbury from Shaftesbury
and the west: by railway from Semley; by the main road, part of the
great trunk highway from London to Exeter via Yeovil; and by a kind of
loop road that leaves this at Whitesand Cross and follows the valley
of the Ebble between the lonely hills of Cranborne Chase and the long
line of chalk downs that have their escarpment to the north,
overlooking the Exeter road. These are all good ways, but there is
even a fourth, only practicable for good walkers, that keeps to the
top of the Downs until the Salisbury Race Course above Netherhampton
is reached. This is a splendid route, with magnificent views to the
left and north, and some to be lingered over in the opposite
direction, and the finest of all when the slender needle of Salisbury
spire pierces the blue ahead.

Three miles out of Shaftesbury a road leaves the main route on the
left for Donhead St. Mary; another by-way from this village joins the
highway farther on and adds but a mile or so to the journey. The
church, high up on its hill, is an interesting structure, mainly
Norman and Early English with some sixteenth-century additions. The
round font belongs to the older style. A memorial to one Antonio
Guillemot should be noticed. He was a refugee Carthusian, who came
here with some brother monks during the French Terror. They found
sanctuary at a farm-house placed at their disposal by Lord Arundell of
Wardour, and now called the "Priory," because of its associations. Not
far from the village is Castle Rings, an encampment from which there
is a grand view of the Wilts and Somerset borderland. In one of the
chalky combes just below the hill is an old Quaker burial gr